Vasiliev, V. P. Manchurian reader for initial teaching.

Author Vasily Pavlovich Vasilyev (1818–1900) was a Russian sinologist, Buddhologist, Sanskrit scholar, and academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He devoted most of his life to studying Mongolia and China. It all began with his studies at the Faculty of History and Philology at Kazan University, where Vasily Pavlovich became passionately interested in this subject. In 1839, he traveled to Beijing as part of the Russian spiritual mission. There, he acquired an impressive collection, consisting of 827 books and manuscripts. After thoroughly researching the history, literature, beliefs, and language of China and Tibet, he gave lectures on these topics at his alma mater, Kazan University, from 1851 to 1855. In 1855, he moved to St. Petersburg, where he became the first Russian professor of Sinology. Vasilyev's contribution to the study of Eastern literature is enormous. He authored approximately two hundred scientific works. 

He wrote the first Russian textbook for studying the Manchu language. It is noteworthy that with the help of V.P. Vasilyev's book, students  became acquainted not only with Far Eastern literature, but also with the multifaceted history of relations between Russia and China in the 17th-19th centuries. The anthology contains not only the usual educational texts given in the first two chapters (“Brief Encyclopedia” and “Samples of Spoken Language”), but also original foreign policy treaties of the Manchu dynasty era between the two neighboring states, starting with the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1685) and ending with those contemporary to the compiler of the manual: Aigun (1858) and Beijing (1860)

Verhy rare book.